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Arkansas Group Backs Review of 70 TitlesA Fayetteville, Arkansas, parent’s ongoing campaign to restrict student access to 70 titles on public-school media center shelves has led her to form an activist group called Parents Protecting the Minds of Children. Founder Laurie Taylor explained at an August 18 gathering of some 60 people that she took the step because the Fayetteville Public School Board would have greater difficulty “circumventing an organization.”The PPMC website features an online petition calling for the establishment of a parent-led committee to audit the contents of school libraries districtwide and a parent board to oversee materials selection. “I’m not on a witch hunt,” Taylor declared, adding that she has been pursuing the issue since last spring because, “if this is not resolved, we as parents lose a fundamental right to parent our children.” In apparent agreement, area resident Mindy Beers asserted that PPMC “is not asking for more than a filter system over written materials” similar to the internet blocking software on the school system’s student workstations, according to the August 19 Springdale Morning News. The meeting came two weeks after Taylor filed a request for reconsideration of Push by Sapphire, taking the advice of school board President Steve Percival to follow the district policy and ask officials to review one title at a time. She followed up August 15 with a challenge to Deal with It: A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain, and Life As a Gurl by Esther Drill, Heather McDonald, and Rebecca Odes. Superintendent Bobby New responded that he would establish a materials review committee to reconsider Push, but wrote Taylor August 22 that the district “does not have the resources available to consider additional requests.” “I have no interest in litigation. I can assure you it will be a last resort,” Taylor said in the August 19 Fayetteville Northwest Arkansas Times. Posted August 19, 2005. |
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